It has been well known that amorphous metallic materials having various shapes, such as a thin strip shape, a filament shape and a powder particle shape, can be obtained by quickly cooling a molten alloy. Since an amorphous alloy thin strip can be easily manufactured by a method which can obtain a large cooling rate, such as a single-roll method, a dual-roll method, a rotating liquid spinning method, or the like, a number of amorphous Fe-alloy, Ni-alloy, Co-alloy, Pd-alloy, Cu-alloy, Zr-alloy and Ti-alloy have been successively obtained. Since these amorphous alloys have industrially very important characteristics such as high corrosion resistance, high strength and the like, which cannot be obtained by crystalline metallic materials, an application of these amorphous alloys in the fields of new structural materials, medical-use materials, chemical materials, or the like, has been expected.
However, according to the aforementioned manufacturing methods, amorphous alloys can only be obtained as a thin strip or a thin wire. Thus, it was difficult to form such amorphous alloys into a final product shape, resulting in an industrially limited usage.
Various studies regarding an improvement of a manufacturing efficiency of an amorphous alloy, an optimization of a composition and a manufacturing method have recently been conducted, and an amorphous alloy ingot having a size which meets the requirements of structural materials has been manufactured. For example, as a Zr--Al--Cu--Ni alloy, an amorphous alloy ingot having a diameter of 30 mm and a length of 50 mm has been successfully obtained (see "Materials Transactions, Japan Institute of Metals" (English version) issued on 1995, Vol. 36, Item. No. 1184). As a Pd--Ni--Cu--P alloy, an amorphous alloy ingot having a diameter of 72 mm and a length of 75 mm has been successfully obtained (see "Materials Transactions, Japan Institute Metals" (English version) issued on 1997, Vol. 38, Item. No. 179). These amorphous alloy ingots have a tensile strength of 1700 MPa or more and a Vickers hardness of 500 or more, and are expected to be used as unique high-strength structural materials having extremely high elastic limit.